Change rating stars intensity in Album Covers view

[FunkySoul]

Hi,

is it possible to change the intensity of the rating stars in the album covers view?
Right now I have this:



I find the stars quite dominant because they are bold like the album and disc#.
I'd rather have them in normal style like the album artist and track info. I can't style them in the *.xml and I looked into the settings.ini. I thought maybe there is something like <ratingStarsStyle>bold</ratingStarsStyle> but I didn't see anything.

Is it possible to change this somehow?

[hiccup]

That is skin dependent.
For how to make changes to an existing skin, look here:

https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=29815.0

[FunkySoul]

No, I don't think it is. Not in the album covers view.

I changed my skin (xml) to my likings (I learned a lot from your sample skin btw. Thank you very much for this!) but

Code

<element id="Panel.StarRating.Default" fg="Highlight2" fg2="65,65,65" /> 
<element id="Panel.StarRating.Highlight" fg="Highlight-Text" fg2="Secondary-Text" /> 
<element id="Panel.StarRating.Lowlight" fg="Highlight2" fg2="65,65,65" />

doesn't work with the album covers view. It gets the colors from the cover. I love this and don't want to change it at all. I just want to change the style of the stars from "bold" to "normal".

[hiccup]

I see you are right. The stars are coloured using the text colour (fg), and then blended a little bit with the background. (perhaps using some slight opacity)
What I find strange from your screenshot is that the stars seem darker then the text.
I think they should be lighter, if what I just wrote is correct.
And that is also what is happening testing this myself on a light skin with dark text.

Are you perhaps using some virtual tag with text colour formatting for the titles that makes them lighter?
Or is it the low quality jpg screenshot that makes it seem that the text is lighter than the rating stars?

[FunkySoul]

Unfortunately the screenshot is ok and it looks exactly like this in the player. And that's my point, I want them to look like the text. They are somehow bold as a standard. Changing the skin to a light one doesn't change the appearane of the album in the album view. This looks the same no matter the skin.

I can change the text settings here:


But these are not linked to the appearance of the stars. No matter what I change there the stars stay bold. That's why I think this needs to be solved somewhere deeper in the player settings, maybe in an ini file or so.

No, I'm not using any virtual tags.

[hiccup]

So the text is probably 0,0,0 then?
You could try making it something like 20,20,20. That might already make some noticeable difference with the darkness of the stars.

But I now understand you predominantly mean the shape of the stars, and that you find them too 'fat'.
They are images, not glyphs of a font. So font settings will not make any difference to the size or shape of the stars.

The only option for this would be to request a skinning feature for skin designers to make it possible for them to design their own stars.
But I am guessing that is not very straightforward to implement, and if it would become a skinning option, my guess is that probably not many skinners will attempt to design their own stars. (I probably wouldn't)

[FunkySoul]

No, no, I don't mean the shape at all. You got me right in the first place.

Changing the text instead of the stars is a good idea. I changed it in the settings to semibold and it looks better. I still prefer it in normal style but overall it's better.

[FunkySoul]

Well, this is my final version:



This is good enough for me.
It looks way better with other albums too.

Before:


After:


Thanks for your help hiccup!

[hiccup]

You're welcome, looking good!

[The Incredible Boom Boom]

This may not work, but what happens if you switch <Title> to a Virtual Tag that displays <Title> <Rating>? And then using a custom mark-up for the <Rating> tag? The ratings would then be unaligned, but you could give the add a fix number of spaces after <Title> in the Virtual Tag to then align the <Rating> stars.

[hiccup]

…And then using a custom mark-up for the <Rating> tag?…

For what the OP is trying to achieve, the other way around would work.

First set the fg of Content[Artwork].Expanded to a light value that results in how light you want the stars to be. (e.g. 160,160,160)

Then create virtual tags for Artist and Title that turn these darker again, and use them for the expanded panel instead of the regular Title and Artist tags.
e.g.

Code

{color: 20,20,20}{font: Segoe UI;Regular;9}<Title>
{color: 100,100,100}{font: Segoe UI;Regular;9}<Artist>